Main Navigation

Ed, and his wife Adrienne--an attorney--have lived in Sedona, Arizona for more than twenty-two years. In 1991, they bought a beautiful property on Oak Creek and in 1994 tore down the old residence and replaced it with a unique home which has been featured in books and newspaper articles in the local area.Present:

1984 – 2001- Co-founder and President of First Guardian Trust Company, Ltd., a corporate management firm, managing foreign sales corporations incorporated in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Barbados, West Indies.

1981 -1984 - Account executive/financial advisor with the brokerage firm of Merrill Lynch in St. Croix, United States Virgin Islands.

1980 - 1981 - Captain of the sixty-five foot power yacht "Ali Kai", for the owner, Mrs. Alice Kaiser, the widow of Henry J. Kaiser (Kaiser Industries, Kaiser Steel) in St. Croix, United States Virgin Islands.

1983 – Purchase Farchette Real Estate business in St. Croix, United States Virgin Islands, and formed the Farchette & Hanley Real Estate (http://www.chrishanley.com/index.htm) firm, which is today, the prime real estate firm on St. Croix. Released interest during divorce settlement in 1984. His son, Christopher, is the highly successful owner/operator today.

Since Adrienne and I have lived in Sedona (1991), I have been
a consultant on the incorporation of reclaimed lumber, mostly timbers,
in the building of new homes. I have worked on seven homes and sold
reclaimed lumber used in numerous other homes and commercial buildings. I have
also made several significant investments in vacant land in the area,
mostly in developing subdivisions.

Ed Hanley was born in Gardiner, Maine in 1935. He is the oldest of the
ten children of Florence (Higgins) and Edward E. Hanley Jr. He was
fortunate to have grown up in a neighborhood where there were thirty, or
more, of his cousins and other youngsters living within a couple of
square miles of his parents' home. It was a wonderful extended family.
And before the time of TV and computers, kids were required to create
their own entertainment so days were spent playing baseball, skiing,
camping out and all the other healthy activities that kept kids happy
and occupied.

Ed spent eleven years as an altar boy in Saint Joseph's Catholic Church in Gardiner. He played four sports in high school, lettering in all four, football, hockey, track and basketball.

After graduating from the Gardiner High School in the class of ’53 he attended St. Anselm’s College in Manchester, New Hampshire, on a basketball scholarship, and began taking classes for pre-med . That same year he joined the U.S. Navel Reserves since the Navy had a program that would help pay some of the costs of college tuition. While attending an air show at (the since closed) Greiner Air Base in Manchester, and watching the United States Air Force flying demonstration team, he asked one of the USAF Thunderbird pilots what it would take for him to be able to do the same thing. The young F-86 pilot advised him to go see a USAF recruiter and see if he could qualify for the USAF Aviation Cadet Program.

The next day he was standing in front of the USAF recruiting office when they opened. The ‘flying bug’ had bitten him badly and he never looked back. He was sent to a testing facility in up-state New York where for three days he was poked, pulled and tested to see if he had ‘the right stuff’. After he passed all the testing he came home and told his mother he was going to become an Air Force pilot, she said,”I can’t believe it!” He never forgot that and has always wondered if she meant, she was surprised he could do it, or she was fearful that he would.

In the summer of 1954, Ed joined the U.S. Air Force as an enlisted man, shipped to Lackland AFB in San Antonio, Texas, for basic training knowing that he had a slot in Aviation Cadets coming up later that year. After six weeks of basic training he was called across the field to the Aviation Cadet area and proudly put on the starched tans of an Aviation Cadet and became a member of the pilot training class of 56-H.
He trained in the PA-18 (Super Piper Cub) and Texan T-6 at Mariana AB in Florida, the T-28 and T-33 at Bryan AFB, Texas and graduated a shiny, gold bar second lieutenant with silver wings in February 1956.

His first assignment was to Pease AFB, New Hampshire that was still under construction when he arrived. The base had not yet received any of the B-47s that he was supposed to fly. He checked out in the C-45 (Beech) and later that year sent to B-47 training at McConnell AFB, Kansas.

Ed flew as co-pilot in the B-47 until 1960 and then spent one year as a
maintenance officer supervising 124 men who maintained the fifteen
aircraft of the 349th Bomb Squadron in the 100th Bomb Wing. Later in
1960, Ed was upgraded to aircraft commander and with 2nd Lt. George
Thompson, co-pilot and 2nd Lt. Ron Farrell; navigator became the
youngest combat ready crew in Strategic Air Command (SAC).

Ed has four children, Sharon, Jennifer (JJ), Edward and Christopher and ten grandchildren.